African woman
Eduardo Bettencourt Pinto
Eduardo Bettencourt Pinto

You open the blinds and look at the street. There is a black woman
on the other side, hands wet
resting on her apron. She’s barefooted. The skin of her face
sparkles, an agitated penumbra
refreshing the breeze.
There is a temblor somewhere in her world.
I can see it on her eyes. They are two crimped
lakes where the strong morning light glitters; transparent,
they drink the birds solar songs.
What can one say about a poor woman,
washing the tiredness of others on a washtub?
You always saw her there, even now,
thirty something years after.
You think about her hands with foam from the soap,
a glass sweat coming down her face,
the backyard drown by the dense shadows of trees
(some fig ones and two papaya),
and the washtub, where she curved her exasperated life
day after day wrinkling dirty water between her fingers,
a quietness of a river asleep
on its own silence.